Give your right arm (or, if you'd rather, €365k) for home in part of a former Cork city medieval leper colony

MEDIEVAL Cork seeps from the pores of the high and ancient walls that gird St Stephen’s Place, a six-home enclave secreted away above Friar Street, with views from upper rooms that scan every city landmark.

Nowadays, those houses are private, but in the Middle Ages they were part of a leper colony, St Stephen’s Priory and Hospital for Lepers. Later, the site passed to city officials, before being granted in 1674 to William Worth, a Dublin merchant.

Possessed of means and a social conscience, Mr Worth set up the ‘Blue Coat’ school, which backed on to current-day Stephen’s St, known then as Blue Coat Lane. For disadvantaged Protestant boys, it closed in 1916, but is recalled in the name of a local housing development, Blue Coat Mews.

It seems fitting that a medical professor and educator would, centuries later, settle in St Stephen’s Place, given the bedrock of healthcare and education.

“I was 30 years in Canada and when I came back to Cork in 2010, every second house was up for sale,” says Professor William Molloy, specialist in geriatrics and rehabilitation medicine and head of the department of Clinical Gerontology & Rehabilitation at University College Cork.

“I wanted a home with high ceilings and a garden and I didn’t want to have to drive to work,” he says. No 1 St Stephen’s Place — reached via gated steps and an archway — measured up and he got it for €150,000.

The location lived up to his expectations. He could walk to the Centre for Gerontology and Rehabilitation at St Finbarr’s Hospital, which he set up as part of UCC’s School of Medicine; and he could stroll into town at night for dinner and a glass of wine and not worry about driving home. “And some of the top 10 restaurants in Ireland are on my doorstep,” Prof Molloy says, referencing award-winning Japanese restaurant Miyazaki at 1A Evergreen Street and Good Day Deli in the superb gardens of tourist destination, Nano Nagle Place, on nearby Douglas Street.

In 2012, Prof Molloy extended No 1, knocking an add-on and garage, pushing out into the rear, tiered garden, and installing a kingsize window along the back wall.

“There was a galley kitchen and now we have this fine room, where the window faces south and the sun beats down on you during summer.”

He replaced all the windows, insulated the attic, put in a new 10’ front door, a new combi boiler, and cleared out the front garden, planting apple, pear and plum trees and laid impressive paving.

Now, after 15 years of convenient cityside living, his retirement and a move to Waterford are imminent.

Selling 119 sq m No 1 is auctioneer Tim Sullivan and he predicts the two-bed semi-d (with the option of a third bedroom on the ground floor) will attract “a younger version of Prof Molloy, someone who only wants to take the car out occasionally and stroll to work or down to Douglas Street for a coffee”.

With a price of €365,000, it’s likely to attract a range of buyers, particularly those with a fascination for the past. They will see much to appreciate, not least the beautiful, old, stone gated archway to the rear. As the end-of-terrace house, No 1 is the only home of six with rear access.

VERDICT: History buffs who favour city living will love the tangible connection to the past. Great location, not a bad price, some upgrades likely.